Google-Shocked

You’re in second grade, enjoying summer vacation, when a neighbor boy comes out of nowhere and thrusts his fist—hard—into your stomach. For seconds, you gasp for air. He’s no foe. In fact, you would have called him a friend until about three seconds ago. What just happened?

Not all of us have been shell-shocked. But we’ve all had the air knocked out of us at some point. For me, it once happened in the way described above. (The little boy thought he was being funny, although his mother laughed at his joke by grounding him.) Well, last week, Google singlehandedly knocked the air out of all of us.

Google is the search engine that the majority of us trust and consult daily for information, news and directions. Who could blame us? Google has a track record for surpassing its competitors like Bing and Yahoo! in terms of producing reliable results.

Last Monday, Google fired an engineer named James Damore who was technically great at his very technical job. There was one small problem. Damore’s personal and political opinions differed from those of Google’s left-wing corporate management. Damore said in a YouTube interview shortly after his firing: “Definitely those [at Google] who aren’t on the left feel like they need to stay in the closet and not really reveal themselves.”

Damore was canned shortly after distributing this 10-page memo to Google employees and sharing his belief that Google’s so-called “diversity” policies are “illegal” and unjust. Damore stated that he considers himself to be a “classical liberal” (similar to what we today refer to as “conservative” or “libertarian”) who “strongly value[s] individualism and reason.”

Google may seem “neutral” because it’s a search engine. In truth, the executive chairman of Google’s parent company Alphabet, Inc.—Eric Schmidt—endorsed Barack Obama in 2008. His loyalty was rewarded when the Obama administration gave one of Schmidt’s other companies a special $1.6 billion “1705” stimulus loan for the development of Ivanpah, a massive solar thermal project along the California-Nevada border. As if a billionaire like Schmidt needs taxpayer help for anything, let alone a solar thermal experiment.

Google’s current CEO, Sundar Pichai, is the first major tech CEO to have “gender-balanced” his executive team to be comprised of seven men and almost the same number of women (six). So Pichai was particularly peeved with Damore for using his memo to express traditional beliefs on gender roles. Precisely, Pichai was perturbed by Damore’s assertion that the tech “gender gap” is largely due to the fact that “men and women biologically differ in many ways” that “aren’t just socially constructed.”

In defending his decision to fire Damore, Pichai said it was “not OK” for a Google employee to express an opinion that differed from his own, specifically that women “have traits that make them less biologically suited” for working in tech.

Men Are Not Women (just Google it)

Type the word “man” into Google’s search field. As of yesterday, you’ll get 6.91 billion results. Now, type the word “woman” into Google’s search field. You’ll obtain 133% fewer (2.97 billion) results. Now try “men” versus “women” and you’ll still get millions more results for “men” than for “women,” showing that females literally can’t best males in a Google search—even by strengthening their numbers.

By Pichai’s own standards, Google seems to be sexist (and therefore hypocritical) because its search results indicate that it finds men to be 133% more worthy of discussion than women. Who is he to preach on gender parity?

In truth, women are doing very well in the business world. In 2016, the average female CEO made $13.1 million, or roughly 15% more than the average salary for a male CEO ($11.4 million). But Pichai won’t be happy until equal numbers of men and women are CEOs. Even if more women don’t want to be CEOs.

As Damore elucidates in his memo, research shows that men put premiums on “systemizing,” “status” and “competition” whereas women prioritize “empathizing,” “people” and “work-life balance.” Hence, men are eager to do what many women are simply uninterested in doing even if it means forgoing a higher paycheck: working longer, less interactive, more stressful and often more dangerous hours in fields ranging from tech to coal mining.

The Brain Gap

There is one thing which Pichai seems to value more than gender diversity at Google: thought uniformity.

The main problem at Google is a lack of intellectual diversity. No Google employee can confidently express an opinion that differs from Pichai’s without fear of retribution. Until this culture changes, Google will be a dead-end company. Google must constantly innovate, and fearful employees cannot think creatively.

Let’s say Pichai gives an internal presentation at Google. Odds are, everyone in the room will nod vigorously and stammer “Brilliant!”—even if Pichai presents them with the dumbest concept they’ve ever heard. Because Google employees don’t live under rocks and—thanks to Damore–every Google employee now knows that Pichai prefers yes-men.

Sure, Pichai may stack his executive team with equal numbers of yes-men and yes-women, but there’s no use denying that this is a façade. Nobody is getting into Pichai’s inner circle if he or she will push him to think outside the box. Which, unfortunately, is exactly the sort of person a strong, mature and successful CEO wants on his or her team.

Damore cast sunshine on Google’s anemic corporate culture. Now is the time for Silicon Valley innovators to do the opposite of Pichai and embrace intellectual diversity. Don’t forget that a high tolerance for intellectual diversity kept us ahead of our Chinese and Russian enemies. While those countries cracked down on free thought, we let our people innovate.

Google-shocked we are, but we weren’t struck by lightning. While there’s still time, let’s learn from Damore’s courage and stop allowing unscientific political correctness to restrain American progress.

Thought control and every other kind of control has been going on for YEARS and no one does anything about it.

I think we *are* doing something about it.

We elected Trump, at a crossroads where we could have elected to run full-speed towards cementing the tyranny that Obama was building.

The fact that Google was finally exposed as a hotbed of petty tyrants is directly related to that. I doubt that James Damore would have had the courage to pen his memo had Hillary been president. Certainly, he would have been vilified and possibly subjected to legal sanctions in Hillary country. But things are changing now. Trump is president, and we're fighting against leftist tyranny.

No, Katie, dear. 6.91 to 2.97 is a reduction of 57.01%, not 133%.

A reduction of 133% would be in negative territory, not possible when discussing search results.

“A reduction of 133% would be in negative territory, not possible when discussing search results.”

One of my pet peeves. We see it every day and always wonder how they got the figure.

Last Friday I drank 6 beers. Saturday I abstained and drank 100% fewer. Sunday I drank another 33% fewer and two beers materialized in my fridge.

So Pichai was particularly peeved with Damore for using his memo to express traditional beliefs on gender roles.

As the days pass, commentary is getting more and more garbled. A big reason is the insistence on using "gender" or even "gender roles," when the word needed is "sex."

Mr. Damore did NOT "express traditional beliefs on gender roles." He summarized current scientific research regarding sex differences. Then he went on to "express beliefs," or more accurately, to offer his opinion regarding policies.

The Google higher-ups could have said, "Thanks for sharing, bud. Now back to work." The fact that they and all their ilk went ballistic demonstrates, in my opinion, that Mr. Damore, all unawares, attacked their religion.

>http://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2014/07/diversity-destruction.html<

...Diversity is an anti-religion, and anti-ideology, a nepotism which promotes everything except one’s own family.

Diversity therefore equals the destruction of any and all religions and of all positive ideologies.

Because Diversity can only be destructive: whatever IS is insufficiently or inexactly diverse.
Whatever IS must therefore be destroyed in order to make it MORE Diverse.
And there is no conceivable or measurable end to it. Yesterday’s Diversity is today’s intolerable lack of Diversity.

Diversity is the destruction of Good; and it is the destruction of all types of Good - however defined. All are chewed up and spat out by Diversity.

Diversity is the promotion of chaos by the destruction of Good; and then there-naming of chaos as Good.

The only way to arrive at such a figure is to subtract 2.97 from 6.91 leaving a figure of 3.94 which if DIVIDED by 2.97 results in a figure which would round off to 1.33. Of course it has no basis in mathematics and only serves to indicate the total ignorance of the writer. It is astounding still to me that we have reached the point that people who IMAGINE themselves to be educated and capable of instructing others use such totally absurd expressions as 133 percent less. I grew up one mile of red clay road from the nearest two lane blacktop in a poor county in South Carolina ten miles from the site of the first secession meeting and attended public schools. Had I come up with such an absurd example of calculating a percentage when I was twelve years old my teacher would have recommended that I be sent to a home for the mentally retarded. I say this in all seriousness yet I have actually had someone on FR try to justify to me the use of such insane expressions. I say unto you IDIOCRACY is an understated documentary.

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